"I can't, but I will," he replied.
And this time— Did I think I knew the marsh? Did I suppose, having seen it at dawn in the fall days when the sun still rises early, having seen it in winter twilight, fog-beset, that I knew it? Do I suppose I know it now? At least I know it better, having seen it under a clearing sky, when the cold wind sweeps it clean, and the air, crystalline, seems like a lens through which one looks and sees a revelation of new things.
As we struck into the marsh, just at sundown, my first thought was a rushing prayer for words, for colors, for something to catch and hold the beauty of it. But there are no words, no colors. No one who has not seen it can know what a New England shore marsh can be in winter under a golden sky.
Winter does some things for us that summer cannot do. Summer gives us everything all at once—color, fragrance, line, sound—in an overwhelming exuberance of riches. And it is good. But winter— Ah, winter is an artist, winter has reserves; he selects, he emphasizes, he interprets. Winter says, "I will give you nothing to-day but brown and white, but I will glorify these until you shall wonder that there can be any beauty except thus." And again winter says: "Did you think the world was brown and white? Lo, it is blue and rose and silver—nothing else!" And we look, and it is so. On that other evening, in the fog, the world had been all gray—black-gray and pale gray and silver gray. On this evening winter said: "Gray? Not at all. You shall have brown and gold. Behold and marvel!"
I marveled. There was a sweep of golden marsh, under a gold sky, and at its borders low lines of trees etched in rich brown masses, and my sentinel cedars standing singly or by twos and threes—cedars in their winter tones of olive brown, dull almost to harshness, holding themselves stiffly against the great wind, yielding only at their delicate tips when the gusts came, recovering again in the lulls, to point dauntlessly skyward. The narrow boundary ditches, already glassing over in the sudden cold, stretched away in rigid lines, flashing back the light of the sky in shivers of gold. The haystacks reiterated the color notes—gold on their sunset side, deep brown on their shadowed one.
There is a moment sometimes, just at sundown, when the quality of light changes. It does not fall upon the world from without, it radiates from within. Things seem self-luminous. Yet, for all their brightness, we see them less clearly, one's vision is dazzled, enmeshed. It is the time when that wondrous old word "faerie" finds its meaning. It is a magic moment. It laid its spell upon us.
Jonathan emerged first, bracing himself. "It will shut down soon. We haven't a minute to spare. We ought to be on the creek now."
It was hard to believe that such brightness could ever shut down. But it did. By the time we reached the creek the gold had vanished, except for a narrow line in the western sky. The world lay in clear, brown twilight, and the wind swept over it.
Jonathan got more hay, and this time I saw the haystack from which he plucked it. I threw myself on it, collar up, cap down, lying as low as possible.
"Bad night for ducks, of course," growled Jonathan. "If only the thaw had held twelve hours more! However—"